The Memory of All Traces
December 2015 – January 2016
Memory – the pattern of sedimented enfoldings of iterative intra-activity – is written into the fabric of the world. The world ‘holds’ the memory of all traces; or rather, the world is its memory (enfolded materialisation).
– Karen Barad
As an artist in residence in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Work in Progress exhibition, I conducted two months of research on the South of Market neighborhood. My goal was not only to illuminate the neighborhood's changes, but also to connect recent history with what is properly understood as historical (with a capital H). In order to do this, I made use of:
- visual analyses of older imagery on StreetView (many areas in SOMA have the option to go back to 2007)
- user-provided content such reviews on YouTube, Yelp, etc., including posthumous listings
- documents at the nearby Prelinger Library, such as the handmade collection of 1960s era newspaper articles about development in SOMA, contributed by Norm Therkelson
- an invitation to the public to contribute anecdotal information, memories, etc. The result, I hoped, was that visitors to and participants in the project would come to experience the present as imminently historical. )
While in residence in the gallery, I maintained a public reading area with texts ranging from Jack Kerouac's "October in the Railroad Earth" to Chester Hartman's Yerba Buena: Land Grab and Community Resistance. Three monitors in the gallery space played: 1) Kent Long's Tribal Scream, showing scenes from a Dead Kennedys show at Rock Against Reagan next to the Moscone Center (where YBCA is now) 1984; 2) Survival Research Labs' performance at the groundbreaking for SFMOMA, which was about to move to SOMA from Civic Center; 3) the 1999 marketing video for the then-self-consciously futuristic Sony Metreon.
I also left out notebooks for visitors to leave thoughts and memories related to certain sites. The information I gathered from research, these notebooks, and conversations with visitors was ultimately woven into a mobile walking tour, which I led in person in January, but which is designed to be a self-guided tour. To access the walking tour, visit this link on your phone.
